Keeping Perspective

It’s easy to look back now and call Martin Scorsese the greatest director of all time.

He’s directed 26 feature firms over 7 decades which have grossed a combined $2.4B and cleared a combined profit of $993M at the box office.

His filmography includes arguably the greatest movie of the 70s (Taxi Driver), the 80s (Raging Bull), and the 90s (Goodfellas).

He’s one of the few great working artists to masterfully balance the line between commercial viability, artistic meaning, and cultural relevance. 

His films have been nominated for 80 Oscars and won 20. He’s won basically every other award that exists in the film industry from the Palme d’Or to the BAFTAs to the Golden Globes. 

His films maintain critical appeal while also appealing to mainstream audiences. Ask 10 random guys on the street what their favorite movie is and I guarantee at least one would say Goodfellas, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, or Shutter Island. Meanwhile your average film student has likely written essays on Taxi Driver and its depiction of loneliness and the descent into madness or The King of Comedy and its commentary on celebrity culture and ambition.

He’s worked with every A-List actor from Leonardo DiCaprio to Robert De Niro to Tom Cruise to Paul Newman.

He boasts one of the most diverse collections of subject matter in cinema history. While his signature is probably the ‘gangster’ film, he’s also made films on Jesus, New York, social ostracization, 19th century American high society, native American history, the Dalai Lama, and more.

If you wanted to study the history of American cinema over the last 70 years, studying his life wouldn’t be a bad way to do it.

But as with most things in life, Scorsese’s unmatched legacy and filmography are only evident in retrospect. It’s easy to look back on Scorsese’s illustrious career now and point out the successes but it's equally easy to ignore the failures, the moments when he bombed at the box office, succumbed to critical lambast, and considered quitting movies entirely.

In 1978 Scorsese collapsed at the Telluride Film Festival. His body was diagnosed to be in critical condition - a result of his mixing asthma medication with cocaine he was abusing at the time.

This health crisis came shortly after the release of his 1977 film, New York, New York - a film disliked by audiences and critics alike. New York, New York’s failure came shortly after the smash hit success of Taxi Driver - a film that made $28.6M on a $1.9M budget (a ~15x return) and firmly injected itself into the cultural zeitgeist. The success of Taxi Driver made the the failure of New York, New York sting that much worse.

For the first time in his young career, New York, New York, turned the fans against him. This change in audience sentiment shook Scorsese’s confidence, sending his personal life into a spiral which culminated in the emergency at the Telluride Film Festival.

Eventually, Scorsese recovered from his health scare but he did experience some permanent changes. He was now aware of the fragility of putting your self worth in an audience, the vulnerability of making your art your vocation, and he understood that he no longer had the advantage of being an underdog - there were people who actively rooted against his early success.

These changes in his psyche made him particularly susceptible to the appeal of the story of Jake Lamotta, a boxer whose rise to stardom was as quick as his plummet back to irrelevance. Jake Lamotta was the world middleweight champion from 1949 to 1951. But his life after boxing was a succession of marriages, divorces, criminal proceedings, and business failings. He achieved the heights of American life but soon after knew its deepest lows.

Scorsese’s frequent collaborator, Robert De Niro was a huge fan of Lamotta’s autobiography and badgered Scorsese to sign on to direct a film adaptation. But Scorsese couldn’t relate to the material until that moment - he hadn’t yet experienced the sweet taste of success oppositely complemented by the sting of failure. But after his health collapse at Telluride and the near collapse of his career after New York, New York, Scorsese understood LaMotta and his plight, so he decided to make the film.

That movie, Raging Bull, was a huge success and is now widely considered the greatest movie of the ‘80s. It was nominated for eight academy awards including a Best Actor award won by Robert De Niro. The American Film Institute ranked it the 4th greatest American movie of all time.

When people look back on Scorsese’s career, they highlight the success of Raging Bull but they often ignore the depths of misery and failure Scorsese experienced just prior to the making of this work that is now a defining landmark of his career.

In the film industry, the size of a director’s budget is a good indication of a studio’s confidence in the director and by proxy an indication of audience interest in the director. The fascinating thing about Scorsese’s budgets over time is that when you zoom out, the trend is up and to the right. But if you zoom in on any one given period the trend can look disastrous. 

In 1982, Regency Enterprises gave Scorsese $18M to make The King of Comedy starring Robert De Niro - yet Scorsese’s next movie After Hours was only given a budget of $4.5M, a 76% decline. In 1986, Scorsese was given $14.5M to make The Color of Money, his next film The Last Temptation of Christ received $7M, a 51.7% decline. In 1995, Scorsese was given $45M to make Casino, his next film Kundun received $28M, a 37.8% decline. In 2011 Scorsese was given $160M to make Hugo, his next film The Wolf of Wall Street received $100M, a 37.5% decline.

Scorsese’s budgets have steadily risen over time but this consistent, positive slope is periodically marked by extreme declines.

The American economy is similar to Scorsese’s career in this respect. 

When you look back at the economic story of our country, it is indisputably a success. Our economy created such innovations as the internet that connects people instantaneously around the globe, the airplane which allows people to travel thousands of miles in mere hours at relatively affordable prices, and artificial intelligence, the applications of which we are just barely scratching the surface. 

All of this innovation has created tremendous value, $30T to be exact. When you look at the chart over time, it’s up and to the right.

But if you zoom in on any one period of time in American history, the economy may appear to be in crisis.

In 1932, nearly a quarter of Americans were unemployed, wages were cut in half, the stock market lost 90% of its value, and trust in the American banking system was broken. In 2008, the market fell 48% from its highs, major financial institutions collapsed, and record numbers of people defaulted on their home mortgages. Even recently, the market has not been performing well - declining ~10% from its all-time highs.

It’s so easy to become captive to the present moment, letting stock prices and the value of your assets determine your mood for the day. But it’s also important to zoom out. In a few years this market correction will hardly be noticeable on a chart of the S&P 500 the same way people hardly remember Martin Scorsese’s struggles as a director. 

In markets as in careers it is important to keep perspective. Even the careers filled with the greatest successes have inevitable pitfalls and even the markets with the greatest growth experience corrections. These are irremovable qualities.

Zoom out and you realize that huge growth occurs over time but zoom in on any given moment and things may appear to be disastrous. Perspective matters.